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Thursday, September 3, 2009

Thursday, September 3, 2009

These days many bakeries dream of the day when cake decorating will consist of two steps:

1) Ice the cake, and2) sell it.

See, actually decorating a cake requires time and effort, and therefore is discouraged where possible. To help bakers achieve this lofty goal, a few enterprising companies (we're not naming any names here....except for that one in the title, of course) are manufacturing all-inclusive instant "decorating" kits.

Here's an example:

Cute, huh? As you can see, plastic is SO in right now. Not only does it save on frosting, but it also allows anyone with the skills of a semi-trained monkey to "decorate" a cake. It's foolproof! All you need is a rounded lump frosted brown, and you're good to go - just stick the plastic bits in! Who could possibly mess that up?

[sigh]

Alright, Wreckerators, now you've actually got me curious: Can you possibly make this look any worse?

Wow. I'm impressed. This looks just like the carpet adhesive we put down last Spring.

Now how about something for the cat lovers haters out there?

From this...

To this!

Taylor G., Tracy F., & Alex M., apparently there really is more than one way to skin a cat.

My first thought was that they looked like they got pinned down for dissection (especially poor Tabby). Does that make me a sick person?WV: croquis: When your beloved pet croquis, you can turn him into a science project.Tracy O

Actually, I think the regular cakes with the plastic dog and cat faces are kinda cute. Sure, the decorator was lazy, but at least I wouldn't mind serving one of them at a kid's birthday. The CCCs are just... horrible and slightly scary...

I dunno, the display cakes are not that bad. I'm guilty of decorating my daughter's birthday cakes with what you call "plastic flotsam" because I really have no cake decorating skills whatsoever, beyond frosting a sheet cake and sticking some toy fairies or something on it. (She loved that cake!)

Both my cat and my dog are horrified at these CCCs (ptuooi!) However, truth be told, my dog flattens himself out with one leg behind him, so he can kind of resemble the first two. Not quite so flat though. And only when wearing a halloween mask.

I'll be charitable and assume the wreckerators did not intend to produce a tribute to road-kill, but rather are perspective-challenged - 3-dimensional figures appear two-dimensional. I sometimes run into this problem when teaching 6th-graders the difference b/w a square and a cube in Math. Well, if I have really sloooowwww 6th graders. Most of 'em figure it out right away. As could the average monkey, trained or untrained. Not that I'm comparing 6th graders to monkeys, or anything. I'm comparing these wreckerators to 6th graders AND monkeys. And yes, that frosting is reminiscent of industrial adhesive. Yum, yum.

Oh, and terri s - please don't give these people any more ideas about naked babies on baked goods! "Hey, just what this needs - a naked baby! That'll make it perfect!"

I have four resident cats (only two of them mine, so no, I am not the Crazy Cat Lady....yet) and at least three of them are capable of adopting this posture. One of them, as a matter of fact, seems to enjoy sleeping that way. But then again, he always was a little strange.

However, when a cat smiles like that, I immediately start searching the kitchen for missing food items, or the rest of the house for inexplicable acts of destruction. Smiling cat=danger!

I am throughly relieved to discover that nearly every one of the comments left here agree that these things look like ROADKILL. So not appealing.

And the carpet adhesive remark? Dead on. (Pun intended) I work for flooring contractors, let me tell you, the sight or smell of freshly scraped carpet adhesive is NOT appealing on or around food products. Ick Ick Ick.

Did anyone else notice the little sticker on the sample cat that says, "For display only. Not for consumption?" The wreckarators must have taken that quite literally and made something that no one would want to eat!

There are few things worse than all the ways wreckerators are able to totally screw up the pictures in the book. I don't even know why bakeries offer the example books. Excited parents, lovers and friends pick out cakes from those books, expecting an adorable confection. And it always comes back looking globby, awkward and poopie.

When I was in school we did actually have to skin a cat in anatomy class (don't ask why, I don't remember it's been a loooooong time). The last one is exactly like I remember it looking. Except for the huge smile.

WV: summe - heard over and over in bakeries everywhere. "you don't like your cake. so summe."

Anyway...What I want to know is how does that other place have the audacity to charge $19 for the same crap that goes for $13 at WalMart?Oh, wait--I see that the first one has employed the use of more cupcakes than the second one does (wider hips and front legs on the dog---not to mention the fancy INSCRIPTION)...SO worth the extra 6 bucks.The best thing to do with something like this? OUT in the middle of the road with it! NOW! Just flop it down there and WALK AWAY. Do not look back.Let someone else deal with calling the road crew/game warden/animal control.See? I didn't *say* it...=^><^=

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!!! AAAHHHHHAAAAA!!!! I haven't laughed out loud in a long time. I was like, Oh no, they did NOT put that plastic stuff on a CCC. Oh my!!!! Hahahahaa! Thanks! This one is so great!

where I live, these plastic "decorations" are placed on tiny cakes (around the size of those first-birthday cakes) that are smaller than the plastic part, leaving the plastic part to hang over the edges.

Imagine my horror when I opened up my new, most favorite blog, Cake Wrecks, to see THE VERY CAT CAKE THAT MY 7-SOON-TO-BE-8-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER HAS PICKED OUT (OFF GOOGLE)FOR ME TO MAKE FOR HER PARTY NEXT WEEK!!!! I've been agonizing for days about how to "un-wreck" it into something I won't be ashamed to say I made! And she will not be swayed in her choice. And now YOU'RE TAUNTING ME!!! waaaaa.

don't all club me at once but there is something sort of adorable about the little lumps of badly frosted cake with the plastic on them ... in a sort of demented adorable sense. I actually laughed out loud and scared the cats when I saw those CCC abominations ... and I know a sh*t ton of rich house wives who LOVE that sort of thing. As a decorator - it makes me want to die. lol.

OMG - I just blogged recently about the "dead cats" we use to teach with - now I could use iced versions!!!Look though this post to see our roadkill cat versions!http://fourpawsandwhiskers.blogspot.com/2009/08/ethics-and-use-of-animals-in-research.html

OMG i saw the dog at my local store when i was picking up my astronomy project that had made out of cake. I thought OMG i have to take a picture of that for cake wrecks but i really need to get to astronomy with this project so i can woo my teacher with sugar.

So if i saw it at my local walmart and several other people did to that means that it was an instructed wrecks so i guess walmart hates cake and doesn't want you to buy any ever

When I was looking at this with my 3 year old son in the room, he saw that first flattened dog & asked me, "Is that a dog who pee-peed?" I think he just recognized the face and a big spreading puddle of yellow.

That poor roadkill kitty! I wish they wouldn't manufacture these stupid plastic cake decorating products anymore! You summed it up perfectly Jen when you said, "it also allows anyone with the skills of a semi-trained monkey to "decorate" a cake." This is what happens when executives run the world and treat artists like sub-human liabilities. (I speak from experience)

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What's a Wreck?

A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.

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